It seems there isn't a good source of map balance data, except the time in 2017 they revealed it officially. However Hanamura and Anubis have nearly perfect balance numbers apparently. I'm not sure what it was about Horizon and Paris that made them completely unworkable while those other maps managed it from day one.
i wonder if its distance to point or something else.
Over all, i do agree that a single choke point is just unfun in most situations. There are a couple of chars that can work around that but it really feels more random if a dive comp will break a choke point.
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
i mean horizon and paris were shitpost maps
its not like them getting reworked was a mystery
they were dogshit from the beginning and it wasnt controversial. they have player experience survey data and for those 2 maps it was very simple; this was awful
I don't agree with the first point mainly cause this is a team game. If Reaper/Winston happened in a bubble(heh) it would be miserable but the answer to that is to not take that fight.
Also two your second paragraph isn't that already how the game is?
It is miserable precisely because the only solution is "hope someone else on your team does it." That requires communication, and them being willing to take the previously mentioned downsides of switching. You are helpless to make the needed change that would address the situation yourself. All you can do is MAYBE make it slightly worse by switching to a tank slightly less hard countered by them, trading the unpleasantness of being super hard countered for being countered but playing a less desired pick plus the ult loss. Having no agency is frustrating and demoralizing. And again, you don't have the choice to take a different fight because of the map and objective design. Mandatory chokepoints, and a singular objective are too predominant to spread out and create pressure elsewhere like you can in MOBAs or even similar games with more open maps and a stronger focus on mobility like Paladins (though it is also very guilty of some maps that are basically just long hallways so are even suckier).
I don't believe that's the way the game is for the problematic matchips. It is for many, like Reaper vs 76. 76 can gun him down at range, but Reaper can disengage and/or melts him from close. Stuff like Rein-Widow isn't bad either. She can't do shit to him where he wants to squat like a fat toad staring at her, and he can't meaningfully pressure her wherever she's perched, but he has to keep his shield on her or get domed. He trades his shield/health for game objective progress, but is not a meaningful threat to her. I think that's an acceptable balance/trade. Other people can pressure him and make him choose, or she can relocate and look for different targets. But there's no way for eg Ball to deal with Mei. Or Winston to deal with Reaper. They just die, and with the low TTK, they evaporate. There's just flat out no good answer in the tanks to too many DPS.
Just rework Doom, Mei, and Reaper into tanks themselves. That'd heavily mitigate a lot of issues.
+1
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Hmm I think one problem is OW has always been two games. The team-based game where people communicate and have a basic understanding of what their character should be doing and the game everyone not in GM plays.
I think a lot of what you guys are asking for is more general player power/control at the cost of some character uniqueness.
Which tbh already seems to be where they're going with OW2
+1
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Hmm I think one problem is OW has always been two games. The team-based game where people communicate and have a basic understanding of what their character should be doing and the game everyone not in GM plays.
I think a lot of what you guys are asking for is more general player power/control at the cost of some character uniqueness.
Which tbh already seems to be where they're going with OW2
are u implying people in gm know whats going on or communicate
because as somebody who was in top 500 i have some terrible news
+1
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Hmm I think one problem is OW has always been two games. The team-based game where people communicate and have a basic understanding of what their character should be doing and the game everyone not in GM plays.
I think a lot of what you guys are asking for is more general player power/control at the cost of some character uniqueness.
Which tbh already seems to be where they're going with OW2
are u implying people in gm know whats going on or communicate
because as somebody who was in top 500 i have some terrible news
I added "basic" for a reason. I know it isn't that much better up there
0
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Hmm I think one problem is OW has always been two games. The team-based game where people communicate and have a basic understanding of what their character should be doing and the game everyone not in GM plays.
I think a lot of what you guys are asking for is more general player power/control at the cost of some character uniqueness.
Which tbh already seems to be where they're going with OW2
are u implying people in gm know whats going on or communicate
because as somebody who was in top 500 i have some terrible news
I added "basic" for a reason. I know it isn't that much better up there
u know the old joke "its turtles all the way down"
its like that but with fragile egos, poor losers and people who really should have stopped queueing 10 games ago
otoh i got my revenge by queueing absolutely fucking blitzed at 4am on my smurf and inting this kind of game so
swings and roundabouts
surrealitycheck on
0
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
But yeah I have this conversation with my brother who rages over this game all the time.
OW was built from the ground up to be a team game and it shows. Like they are literally things you cannot without your team.
This is actually something I enjoyed greatly as someone whose played a lot of shooters as it required you to showcase a lot of skills outside of just clicking heads well. Like communication, strategy and coordination.
The problem with this is if you're on a team with none of these skills a lot of the time you just lose slowly with little you can do. Which can be very rage-inducing.
Sadly the solution to this is more or less to "Call of Duty"-ify or standardize it in a way where individual player impact is more...impactful.
You can already see it in some of OW2 design changes(Removing all hard CC from DPS, making tanks less tank-y, etc)
It will probably empower the individual player and (slightly) reduce the rage but it'll do so at the cost of some of the game's identity.
+1
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
the problem with ow is quite simple
tanks
tanks are designed to stop u shooting in first person in an fps
every single bad meta is a consequence of tank design
goats? double shield? u name it its tanks
getting rid of one tank is the beginning of understanding the problem, but they should never have had tanks to begin with. ow was by far at its most fun when there was no role q and u could play nonsense 6v6 200hp teams, and at its worst when nerds were picking double shield or whatever
its not just shields, its even things like defense matrix. they are all net satisfaction negatives; shielding an attack makes u less happy than that person landing an attack, etc
and they have realised this, just a little bit late. lets hope they get on with things
surrealitycheck on
+2
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
But that's the thing. Tanks also make the game unique.
But yes generally stopping people from doing what they want to do is usually way more powerful than doing said thing
Also I personally disagree 6v6 with everyone playing some version of DPS was godawful chaos and I was glad to see it go.
It was basically 5 minutes of everyone soft throwing until someone finally decided...Hey maybe we should try actually winning.
Dragkonias on
+2
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
i mean role q made no difference
people playing rein/zarya into pharmercy or whatever
hog/ball into double shield
people are out there to lose no matter the method
0
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
But hey if you want to play OW where everyone is DPS and there are no hard counters you could just go play Valorant 🙃
I mean I wouldn't recommend it but it's there.
Dragkonias on
+3
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
I don't think you need to standardize everybody into DPS-lite. Tanks could be more designed in the Zarya vein, where playing them well and using their abilities effectively creates a positive feedback loop that makes them even tankier. This is something about tanks that I really like in Paladins. Most are designed to reward you for juggling and using your abilities effectively. In Overwatch, it'd be like if DVa gained DM charge for each missile that hits an enemy, and for each 100 damage blocked by DM got a 1 sec reduction for her missiles. Or maybe Reinhardt's hammer heats up as he takes damage, giving him a buff to his melee or an empowered Fire Strike. Reaper/Doom's "get tankier as you do damage" is also a classical tank ability in most MOBAs, and isn't anywhere near as much of an issue when the damage being done is much lower.
E:
Like Ash and Terminus are both tanks in the "too angry to die" kind of gameplay. They're blasts to play. Ash has literally the lowest DPS in the game and is a knockback tank, so is disruptive, really sticky to her targets, and can put damage on them really easily. Terminus is the kind of siphon/missile loop I described above. Both are a blast to play. This kind of thing does add a massive amount of extra complexity to the game and mechanics, but I don't think you need to necessarily know anything besides the high points. Ash that does damage is going to be super hard to kill. Feeding a Terminus's siphon is bad. The exact numbers and mechanics are just for the top level. You can complain that tanks stop people from doing damage, but playing an effective tank and being an unkillable force of nature taking on all comers... that's fucking great.
I do think it would be a good move to make supports more into DPS-lite though. They should be able to more capably defend themselves. Not at an advantage against the regular DPS, certainly, but not the lunchmeat they are right now either.
Livestream was light on details but there were some tidbits:
April 26th beta launch date is the plan.
Doomfist is a tank, very dominant right now. Much less damage, has a leap like Winston?
Orisa has a javelin now? No other details given
Dive is OP in 5v5 right now due to lack of offtank and CC reductions, and supports struggle as a result, working on balance updates to the alpha
Contrary to expectations, Reinhardt has proven weak and Dva/Zarya have proven strong as solo tanks so far
Sounds like pings stick to enemy players if they can be seen, I'm inferring this because they mentioned that Moira blink will clear the ping from herself
Updates will come out before the April beta with concrete details of pings, Doomfist/Orisa reworks
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I didn't watch it, thought it would go longer or be something beyond talking heads, but it seems like if they're going to reduce CC you need to flat out say Tracer is getting a hard nerf. Everything bad with balance has roots in them not wanting to touch Tracer. Remove a blink, cut her damage in half so she's just a mosquito doing setup for the other DPS, kill your darlings.
For wanting to reduce CC I get worried when I read in that link Sojourn and Orisa both have some CC added to their kits.
Or just change her to being a support. Allow her to rewind others and not just herself, allow her to drop the bomb on allies for a healing burst or something
They definitely implied that Tracer is getting a nerf, I think hardly anyone is untouched.
0
Options
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
Even in the first preview it was pretty obvious DPS could do what they wanted with no one to really stop them.
Also limiting hard CC to tanks while having only 1 tank is probably part of it. If I had to guess the reason Doom is dominant is cause he probably has strong CC.
Hopefully they figure something out. But if it ends up just being Call of Overwatch not sure how I'll feel.
Edit: Also I don't know why they're surprised Rein is underperforming. He got less shields and no sub tank support and all he got in return was a 2nd firestrike and the ability to steer his situational, highly commital long CD ability.
Dragkonias on
0
Options
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Even in the first preview it was pretty obvious DPS could do what they wanted with no one to really stop them.
Also limiting hard CC to tanks while having only 1 tank is probably part of it. If I had to guess the reason Doom is dominant is cause he probably has strong CC.
Hopefully they figure something out. But if it ends up just being Call of Overwatch not sure how I'll feel.
Edit: Also I don't know why they're surprised Rein is underperforming. He got less shields and no sub tank support and all he got in return was a 2nd firestrike and the ability to steer his situational, highly commital long CD ability.
All I want is a larger % of games to be actually competitive. Tracking my games has shown me that only about 1/3 of my games are actually competitive, with 1/3 unloseable and 1/3 unwinnable.
Having no agency sucks, even when it means auto-winning because of a thrower or leaver.
Winter explains how you can expect this to look in-game: “A ping can be ‘stuck’ to a hero while they are visible, and the ping shows the last known location when they aren’t visible.” The ping changes depending on hero abilities. Sombra’s Translocator, Doomfist’s Meteor Strike, Moira’s Fade, and Tracer’s Recall are all examples of abilities that will cause the ping to fall off. This was designed to specifically fit with Overwatch’s fast-paced gameplay.
I think it sounds like a big win for pub play in particular, but pretty powerful for coordinated teams too.
The biggest reason to introduce it is because in-game voice chat is a hell-hole but at the same time I still wish I could warn people about that flanking reaper with ult or I'm moving into a spot to EMP as Sombra or whatever.
There are some clarifying posts on the forums about how it works, basically it's independently sticky for each player's line of sight. You don't get wallhacks on an enemy when your teammate pings them and you can't see them - you get a stationary ping of where they were. If you can see them, and they use an escape ability or leave your line of sight, then the ping will remain where they were last seen from your perspective.
+2
Options
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Fronting of information or lack thereof has always been a conscious design decision and the knock on effects of better communication tools have been a long time coming tbh
They should buff rein by letting him throw his teammates.
0
Options
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
The one thing I wish for beyond anything else is allowing me to remove Switch players from the Crossplay pool.
The game doesn't have the size right now for just doing Xbox (I'm guessing it's the same for PS), so you have to do Crossplay. And playing against PS is fine, those KBAM losers are scum of the earth and karma will hurt them. But the Switch players ruin the hell out of the game. I don't blame them but at the same time lets look at the facts yo:
-30 fps
-not even 1080p
-95% chance playing on wifi
-50/50 chance of them playing undocked
-50/50 chance of them playing with the joycons
-100% chance of them having horrible X/Y axis speed, probably the slow AF default, you can tell Switch player immediately by how they deal with Sym or Torb turrets (both of which got ridiculously buffed when crossplay was introduced) and when they show up on the killfeed.
And this is before whatever cuts they have to do to make the game work for OW2 specs.
+1
Options
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
Honest question, but what does them playing undocked matter? It's just a charging port and TV hookup.
Honest question, but what does them playing undocked matter? It's just a charging port and TV hookup.
If they go undocked they're likely going with joycons on the side, which is awkward as hell for a team based FPS. I don't know if they have motion controls on it too but that would be another Neddly No No.
Just going from the Xbox One X to the Series X there's a considerable jump in quality, 60 to 120 FPS seriously makes or breaks sniping.
Honest question, but what does them playing undocked matter? It's just a charging port and TV hookup.
If they go undocked they're likely going with joycons on the side, which is awkward as hell for a team based FPS. I don't know if they have motion controls on it too but that would be another Neddly No No.
Just going from the Xbox One X to the Series X there's a considerable jump in quality, 60 to 120 FPS seriously makes or breaks sniping.
Motion controls make FPS much, much easier. Not quite as much with the undocked switch, but still.
Had my first encounter with a DDOS hacker in game. Opposing player disconnected multiple players from my team about 3 times, and then in the post-match as well. What the actual fuck?
Edit: btw, it’s not connection issues. It’s crashing players out of the game entirely, forcing a full reload of OW multiple times in a match.
Seems like they're doing a few of these to replace the other events up until OW2 PvP is released. I guess if they're going all-in on getting OW2 out ASAP then I'm on board with them skimping on the skins.
Posts
game saved
i wonder if its distance to point or something else.
Over all, i do agree that a single choke point is just unfun in most situations. There are a couple of chars that can work around that but it really feels more random if a dive comp will break a choke point.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
its not like them getting reworked was a mystery
they were dogshit from the beginning and it wasnt controversial. they have player experience survey data and for those 2 maps it was very simple; this was awful
this is the only good thing about paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ0xHcxNEos
It is miserable precisely because the only solution is "hope someone else on your team does it." That requires communication, and them being willing to take the previously mentioned downsides of switching. You are helpless to make the needed change that would address the situation yourself. All you can do is MAYBE make it slightly worse by switching to a tank slightly less hard countered by them, trading the unpleasantness of being super hard countered for being countered but playing a less desired pick plus the ult loss. Having no agency is frustrating and demoralizing. And again, you don't have the choice to take a different fight because of the map and objective design. Mandatory chokepoints, and a singular objective are too predominant to spread out and create pressure elsewhere like you can in MOBAs or even similar games with more open maps and a stronger focus on mobility like Paladins (though it is also very guilty of some maps that are basically just long hallways so are even suckier).
I don't believe that's the way the game is for the problematic matchips. It is for many, like Reaper vs 76. 76 can gun him down at range, but Reaper can disengage and/or melts him from close. Stuff like Rein-Widow isn't bad either. She can't do shit to him where he wants to squat like a fat toad staring at her, and he can't meaningfully pressure her wherever she's perched, but he has to keep his shield on her or get domed. He trades his shield/health for game objective progress, but is not a meaningful threat to her. I think that's an acceptable balance/trade. Other people can pressure him and make him choose, or she can relocate and look for different targets. But there's no way for eg Ball to deal with Mei. Or Winston to deal with Reaper. They just die, and with the low TTK, they evaporate. There's just flat out no good answer in the tanks to too many DPS.
Just rework Doom, Mei, and Reaper into tanks themselves. That'd heavily mitigate a lot of issues.
I think a lot of what you guys are asking for is more general player power/control at the cost of some character uniqueness.
Which tbh already seems to be where they're going with OW2
are u implying people in gm know whats going on or communicate
because as somebody who was in top 500 i have some terrible news
I added "basic" for a reason. I know it isn't that much better up there
u know the old joke "its turtles all the way down"
its like that but with fragile egos, poor losers and people who really should have stopped queueing 10 games ago
otoh i got my revenge by queueing absolutely fucking blitzed at 4am on my smurf and inting this kind of game so
swings and roundabouts
OW was built from the ground up to be a team game and it shows. Like they are literally things you cannot without your team.
This is actually something I enjoyed greatly as someone whose played a lot of shooters as it required you to showcase a lot of skills outside of just clicking heads well. Like communication, strategy and coordination.
The problem with this is if you're on a team with none of these skills a lot of the time you just lose slowly with little you can do. Which can be very rage-inducing.
Sadly the solution to this is more or less to "Call of Duty"-ify or standardize it in a way where individual player impact is more...impactful.
You can already see it in some of OW2 design changes(Removing all hard CC from DPS, making tanks less tank-y, etc)
It will probably empower the individual player and (slightly) reduce the rage but it'll do so at the cost of some of the game's identity.
tanks
tanks are designed to stop u shooting in first person in an fps
every single bad meta is a consequence of tank design
goats? double shield? u name it its tanks
getting rid of one tank is the beginning of understanding the problem, but they should never have had tanks to begin with. ow was by far at its most fun when there was no role q and u could play nonsense 6v6 200hp teams, and at its worst when nerds were picking double shield or whatever
its not just shields, its even things like defense matrix. they are all net satisfaction negatives; shielding an attack makes u less happy than that person landing an attack, etc
and they have realised this, just a little bit late. lets hope they get on with things
But yes generally stopping people from doing what they want to do is usually way more powerful than doing said thing
Also I personally disagree 6v6 with everyone playing some version of DPS was godawful chaos and I was glad to see it go.
It was basically 5 minutes of everyone soft throwing until someone finally decided...Hey maybe we should try actually winning.
people playing rein/zarya into pharmercy or whatever
hog/ball into double shield
people are out there to lose no matter the method
I mean I wouldn't recommend it but it's there.
where is beautiful junkrat............
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6deXCL7fMFA
E:
Like Ash and Terminus are both tanks in the "too angry to die" kind of gameplay. They're blasts to play. Ash has literally the lowest DPS in the game and is a knockback tank, so is disruptive, really sticky to her targets, and can put damage on them really easily. Terminus is the kind of siphon/missile loop I described above. Both are a blast to play. This kind of thing does add a massive amount of extra complexity to the game and mechanics, but I don't think you need to necessarily know anything besides the high points. Ash that does damage is going to be super hard to kill. Feeding a Terminus's siphon is bad. The exact numbers and mechanics are just for the top level. You can complain that tanks stop people from doing damage, but playing an effective tank and being an unkillable force of nature taking on all comers... that's fucking great.
I do think it would be a good move to make supports more into DPS-lite though. They should be able to more capably defend themselves. Not at an advantage against the regular DPS, certainly, but not the lunchmeat they are right now either.
For wanting to reduce CC I get worried when I read in that link Sojourn and Orisa both have some CC added to their kits.
Also limiting hard CC to tanks while having only 1 tank is probably part of it. If I had to guess the reason Doom is dominant is cause he probably has strong CC.
Hopefully they figure something out. But if it ends up just being Call of Overwatch not sure how I'll feel.
Edit: Also I don't know why they're surprised Rein is underperforming. He got less shields and no sub tank support and all he got in return was a 2nd firestrike and the ability to steer his situational, highly commital long CD ability.
All I want is a larger % of games to be actually competitive. Tracking my games has shown me that only about 1/3 of my games are actually competitive, with 1/3 unloseable and 1/3 unwinnable.
Having no agency sucks, even when it means auto-winning because of a thrower or leaver.
I think it sounds like a big win for pub play in particular, but pretty powerful for coordinated teams too.
assuming they're quick about adding/adjusting it according to player feedback like they say, should be a really good addition to the game
The game doesn't have the size right now for just doing Xbox (I'm guessing it's the same for PS), so you have to do Crossplay. And playing against PS is fine, those KBAM losers are scum of the earth and karma will hurt them. But the Switch players ruin the hell out of the game. I don't blame them but at the same time lets look at the facts yo:
-30 fps
-not even 1080p
-95% chance playing on wifi
-50/50 chance of them playing undocked
-50/50 chance of them playing with the joycons
-100% chance of them having horrible X/Y axis speed, probably the slow AF default, you can tell Switch player immediately by how they deal with Sym or Torb turrets (both of which got ridiculously buffed when crossplay was introduced) and when they show up on the killfeed.
And this is before whatever cuts they have to do to make the game work for OW2 specs.
If they go undocked they're likely going with joycons on the side, which is awkward as hell for a team based FPS. I don't know if they have motion controls on it too but that would be another Neddly No No.
Just going from the Xbox One X to the Series X there's a considerable jump in quality, 60 to 120 FPS seriously makes or breaks sniping.
Amen.
https://youtu.be/tO2TCW1jD7A
Still suffering under the stifling yoke of 60fps.
Motion controls make FPS much, much easier. Not quite as much with the undocked switch, but still.
Edit: btw, it’s not connection issues. It’s crashing players out of the game entirely, forcing a full reload of OW multiple times in a match.
Seems like they're doing a few of these to replace the other events up until OW2 PvP is released. I guess if they're going all-in on getting OW2 out ASAP then I'm on board with them skimping on the skins.